Names
by icantwritesothere
Summary: Post Brotherhood: It's the last day of Mustang's inspections of the restoration in Ishval and a threat has arisen. However with Riza facing some problems of her own, can she protect the Brigadier General as well? Royai sprinklings...Rated T for language.
1. Thoughts

**A/N: ahhhhhhhhhh! This is my first fanfic ever and it's a homage to the greatest pairing of all time: ROYAI!**

**Any comments: praise, insults, advice, questions, all are welcome!**

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the characters or Fullmetal Alchemist.**

* * *

**Thoughts**

Brigadier General Mustang was in danger.

Truth be told, he had always been in danger ever since he joined the military as the esteemed Flame Alchemist. The peril he was in increased substantially after the Ishavalan Massacre as vengeful Ishvalans and disgusted Amestrians tried to enact their revenge on Mustang in a futile attempt to right the wrongs of the Massacre. She and he both knew that these 'terrorists' were completely justified and in another world where there was no corrupt government, she would have let them have their way. However, they both had a mission and to ensure the completion of this mission they would have to stay alive, at least for the time being.

Yes, Mustang was always in danger and it was her job to protect him from it, make sure their mission was completed and to see to it that he did not stray from this path. Otherwise she would have to correct him or end him.

The danger he faced paralleled his quick ascension up the ranks, and the higher he rose the more threats that faced him. Now, as Brigadier General, he faced trouble in the form of a rebel group, the True Amestrians. These poorly misguided fools believed that Mustang had staged a coup on the Promised Day to steal power away from the true leader of Amestris, Fuehrer King Bradley, which was true, but their assumptions about his intentions were entirely false. These radicals believed that the government in place now, with her grandfather, General Grumman, now Fuehrer President Grumman in charge, was an authoritarian mandate and that the previous government was the democracy. Which, to put it lightly, was bullshit. It was obvious to most of the public, after the details of the Promised Day and the events that preceded it had been released, that the previous Amestris they had lived in had been a military controlled state and they were now thankfully enough in a democracy. However some idiotic citizens had put it into their thick, little skulls that this was not the case which was why Riza was currently situated in a small, dark room in the middle of the ruins of Ishval with a rifle in hand, a horrifyingly familiar position which she did not want to find herself in. Nevertheless, this was necessary to ensure the safety of the Brigadier General and the completion of their mission. There had been several attacks already, as the General had conducted inspections of Ishval, but these were amateur attacks, done by teens who barely had a few hairs on their chin and even fewer brains. However, word on the street was that these attacks had been decoys for a bigger assault planned on Mustang's last day of inspection.

It was beautifully planned, she had to admit. Most of the troops that weren't involved in the rebuilding had left already and they had no back-up as the news of the attack was only found out late last night.

_"Well,"_ she thought, _"Better late than never."_

As the sun began to set over the rugged rubble-ridden horizon of Ishval and the Brigadier General turned the corner moving into Lieutenant Catalina's jurisdiction, her mind wandered, unprofessionally, she thought, onto the events last night that had led her to be situated in her current position

* * *

Riza was about to retire to her room when she felt a slight wind pass her. An ordinary person would have shrugged it off as being a light evening wind, however Riza's years as a sniper had led her to the belief that assumptions were fatal. An evening breeze, although common in other areas of Amestris, was scarce in the sweltering wasteland that was Ishval. She quickly began a sweep of the area, paying special attention to the numerous shadows that covered the corridor in which her and the General's rooms were. Then she saw it. A dark figure lingering in the shadows at the other end of the corridor. Almost as soon as she had spotted it, the figure threw a knife at her and leapt out of its hiding place. The knife embedded itself firmly in the wall behind her, an inch or so away from her ear.

_"A warning,"_ she deemed.

This man was trained well, well enough to almost match her in combat.

_"Almost, but not quite."_

Riza almost instantly retaliated with a few shots from the gun she kept in her shoulder holster, but the man was too quick. He deftly moved through a crack in the window nearest to him, but Riza was already on his trail. She paused for a breadth of a second outside Mustang's door to decide whether to check up on him, but she decided against it. He had gone through military training too and was quite adept at hand to hand combat and besides, he had his flame alchemy to protect him.

_"Yes, but this assassin is almost as good as me and it's dangerous to assume that the General's prepared for an attack, especially at this time of night."_ she considered as she vaulted through the window after the assailant. _"It's fine, I'll quickly deal with this idiot and then check up on the General,"_ she reasoned.

The would-be attacker had set off down the alleyway beside the building they were staying in. Although his training was evident from the way he had evaded her detection for so long and thrown the knife, she could see clearly that he was no expert in combat. He ran straight down the alleyway and not in a serpentine manner like she would.

_"If he was as good as me, or Breda then he would have realised when I shot him that I had not used up all my bullets and I would shoot him again. And any man trained to throw knives like that would know that running in a serpentine technique would be the best way to avoid my bullets."_

While she pondered this, she withdrew her gun from her thigh holster and began shooting with both guns as she sprinted down the alley after the man. It took only four bullets to ground the man and she jogged the rest of the distance to him. She pinned him to the floor, even though the wounds in the back of his left knee and thigh were sufficient enough to keep him from escaping. She had shot to injure, not kill. She had had enough of death and murder and was not going to kill again, especially in the city where all her murdering nightmares stemmed from. However, as the seconds ticked she realised that there was no way she could arrest him and take him all the way back to East City.

_"You can think about that later, Riza. The General may be in danger right now or even dying. You need to find out information about this man and why he's here."_

"Who are you and why are you here?"

The man gave her a thin smile behind which his pain was evident. "I think you know exactly why I'm here."

"Don't cheek me. Why were you outside the General's room?" Riza spat out with gritted teeth.

"Wasn't that obvious? I thought the General's bitch was more intelligent than this." He had stopped struggling and watched her with a cool gaze as she began to lose her shit.

"_Answer me now! Who are you and why are you here?" _her voice shook with anger and frustration at the man's infuriating responses. A bit of the tremor in her voice may have been due to the small corner of her brain that was gripped with fear as to the conditions of the General, but she cast those thoughts aside to focus on the matter at hand.

Then her hand felt wet.

_"Shit." _she thought.

While Riza had been amateurishly dwelling on her thoughts about the General, the man had managed to free a knife from his jacket and stab himself in the throat. Blood spurted from the wound and trickled down his neck to stain the hem of his shirt and her hands that were gripping it. Even in the dark moonlit alley they were in she could see the stark red of the man's life essence colouring her sheet-white knuckles, knuckles white from gripping his shirt in utter rage. She could see the blood slowly fill his mouth and turn his dead grin even more hideously gruesome. She left him there, blood leaking from his lips and staggered back down the alleyway to the building where she was staying. However the journey back was tougher than expected.

The dead man's image was too similar to the bodies she had nightmares about , the bodies she had made nearly 10 years ago in the same place. She stopped to throw up her dinner, the sight of the man and the many Ishvalans she had killed punching her again and again. Yet the death of this man felt worse. True, she had not killed him, but the fact that he had suffered a death worse than one her bullets could have given him made her feel guilty. If she had shot him in the head, then he wouldn't of had to kill himself. But then again, if he hadn't attacked the General then he wouldn-The General! She immediately began to hurry down the alleyway despite the ache she felt all over due to the onslaught of memories.

However, she had a painful inkling that the ache she felt was not due to her guilt over the man's suicide. It dawned on her that, while being a sniper she had never seen one of her victims up close. This was her first experience of watching a man die and to put it bluntly, it was horrific.

_"Is this how all of my victims looked like? Is this the pain they had to endure?"_

Despite her deliberations and pain she powered through. She had a General to check up on.

* * *

**A/N: aahhh! so what do people think? anyone want me to continue this? Anon who requested this, do you like it? THANK YOU GUYS FOR READING IT!**


	2. Distractions

**A/N: ****I'm so sorry about how late this is. I know i said i'd upload it on feb 14th but... sorry guys. I'm sorry this is much longer than the other chapter too. Hope you enjoy this and as always, any comments, any at all (constructive ****criticism, ****praise or even a "i hate it") is welcome. :)**

* * *

**Distractions**

A crackle from the radio on her hip forcibly hauled her back into the present.

"Bravo Golf has finished inspections. Packing and returning to base, now. Stop."

Catalina's voice was barely audible amongst the crackles and static of the radio, but Riza was already packed and had a foot out the door before the radio had spewed out its last crepitation. Her soldier's training had not let her do nothing while she remembered the events of yesterday and therefore she had disassembled and packed her rifle absentmindedly before the all clear was given. It was stupid of her, yes, especially with the threat of an attack still heavy in the air, but she needed to be close to the Brigadier General, or at least be able to see him, if she was to protect him from any harm.

It wasn't as if she didn't trust Mustang's team, which now also consisted of Maria Ross, Denny Brosh, Sheska Bartkowski and Rebecca Catalina, who's been brought in after the events of the Promised Day due to their trustworthy nature, the absence of Vato Falman and Maria's indebtedness towards the General and his need for a bigger subordinate team due to his newly acquired rank. She had confidence in them alright especially after the events of the Promised Day. However when it came to the Brigadier General, it was her and her alone that she trusted enough to guard him.

In her daze, pondering about her trust in the team, she had almost exited through the door.

_"Get it together Riza!" _she hissed inwardly.

She turned and made her way out of the window before the door had even fully opened. It was safer to be leaping from rooftop to rooftop, hundreds of feet above the ground than risking an armed hit man or more on the stairs. Who knew what danger could be awaiting her inside the corridors of the decrepit building, and what good would she be to Mustang if she was injured or dead?

She ran swiftly atop the crumbling buildings, taking the most direct path to the hotel where they were staying, all the time surveying the area for the idiot True Amestrians and any sign of their impending attack. However she felt herself drift again, back to the events of last night. This was unusually careless of her, unusual in the fact that she was reminiscing for the second time in the space of an hour. She was never one to space out on the job. She was a professional, dammit! Why was this happening?

_"Riza, what is wrong with you?"_

Was it due to the assailant that she had indirectly killed and the assault of memories that followed it? Or her fear of not being able to save the General in times of peril? Her mind flashed back to the time under the fifth laboratory when she thought her fear had been fulfilled. She blinked hard trying to reign those memories back into the vault in which she kept them.

_"Fuck it."_

She neared the hotel and finally allowed her mind to sink back into the recesses of last night, using the ineptitude of the rebels and the assumption, she was so irritated in making, that Mustang was already safe in the hotel as poor excuses for letting her mind drift off.

* * *

When she had arrived back at the hotel, she had immediately gone to the Brigadier General's room, not even bothering to wash her mouth after her retching or the blood on her hands from the dead man. She barged in, stumbling unceremoniously after hastily unlocking the door with the spare key she always had.

The Brigadier General turned his head leisurely toward her, his eyes slightly wide with shock as to her ungraceful entrance. He was lying in bed with a book in hand, wearing a shirt and slacks, with the top button being left undone due to the stifling heat of Ishval.

"Is there a problem, Major?" he inquired, his voice laced with amusement. She was known to break in brusquely at any suspicion of danger and that had resulted in some rather awkward predicaments in the past.

Now, however, she ignored his question, using the time instead to check him and his room for any indication of the attacker's possible assail. Besides, she seriously doubted that she could speak without regurgitating again.

She ran her eyes over Mustang's body where there was no signs of any attack. She took a quick sweep of the room to see if anything had been disturbed but that was futile as Mustang's room always looked like there had been a break in. Lastly she checked the entry and exit points. The door had been locked when she had tried to come in and the window was closed as not to let in mosquitoes and other unneeded bugs and parasites. Also they had realised by now that it was too wistful to hope for a breeze during the sweltering dry nights.

"Answer me Major!" His words came out, hard and formal and without the previous traces of mirth.

She finally turned her head and looked him in the eyes. He was now sitting up in bed with worry etched into his face. His look seemed to bore right through her and she was almost certain that he was reading her thoughts about what had just transpired. After what seemed like an eternity and a half, his eyes left hers and trailed down her body where they stopped at her hands.

"Major, your hands!"

Riza had been trying hard not to open her mouth as he had watched her intently but his sudden attention to the appendages that she had been trying so fervently to hide caused her to gasp a little. She followed his line of sight with her own eyes and looked upon her hands.

They were a grisly spectacle, to say the least.

The man's life essence was as vermillion as it had been when it had first dyed her hands, however it had began to dry in places such as the gaps between her fingers and in-between her fingernails. There it stained the skin as a dark crimson and cracks had begun to form. She looked as if she had just killed a man, which she had in a circuitous way.

Then the red seemed to get darker and turn into a colour beyond black. A prickling heat swathed her in an uncomfortable embrace and the colour suddenly snapped to an eye-numbing white. The white turned into flashes of bright light. Flashes that soon turned into images, memories of Ishval, of dead bodies, dead bodies that she had put there. Then she was in the battlefield, in the scorching noon of Ishval gunning down innocent people, their blood staining the tan coloured sand on the ground. Her head pounded with all the visions as if each recall was a slap to the head. Then it all stopped. Abruptly.

Then blackness began to seep into her vision. No, not blackness but blood. It trickled behind her eyelids, like it had dribbled from the man's neck. A thick, red viscous substance from which there was no escape. She felt it consume her eyes and her mind, a thick heaviness settling upon both.

_"Shit."_

She was going to faint! Never in her life had she done something so monumentally... pathetic! She was Major Riza Hawkeye, for fuck's sake! She had survived everything, from her father tattooing his secrets onto her back to the Ishvalan Massacre to the Promise Day and everything that had happened underneath central command with the Gold-Toothed Doctor.

And now she was going to faint at the sight of a bit of blood?!

She shut her eyes tightly before the blackness took her. But there was no blackness, no blood. She opened her eyes and blinked in confusion. Why hadn't she fainted? She was so sure that-

Riza fell to the floor and threw up everything but the lining of her stomach.

* * *

She entered the lobby, giving a quick nod to the Ishvalan man at the front desk before she hurried to the General's room. However she came to an abrupt stop at the top of the corridor when she saw Colonel Miles and Scar talking to the General outside his room. She allowed herself to begin breathing normally after the short breaths she took in order to run there. He was safe; she was here and he was flanked by Lieutenant Catalina and Havoc. Fuery was in his room below, operating the radio systems and listening to the conversation through the bugs planted within the corridor and on Mustang himself. The Brigadier General paused a second to acknowledge her arrival before he continued his conversation with the Colonel and Scar.

She could walk up to them to hear firsthand what their discussion was about but she realised from years of duty that conversations had a way of changing abruptly with the addition of a new person in the audience. Instead she decided to figure out how their discussion was going through their body language. She had a strong feeling that they were talking about how the renovations were going in Ishval and their next course of action in rebuilding it and its society.

She knew what they were talking about but still she studied them painstakingly. The Brigadier General, Colonel Miles and Scar were all standing sharp and upright, a sign that the conversation was still in formal territory, something that was also evident from the curt, reserved tones used by the three men. Miles was presumably notifying Mustang about the action that will be undertaken after his departure, as all eyes were on him. Their arms were by their sides, with Scar's hands clasped in front of him, the Colonel's animated in speech and the General's in fists. They always seemed to be in fists here, in Ishval. Maybe it was the heat.

_"Or maybe he's constantly remembering the Massacre. Like me."_

Their feet were facing each other, Scar's and the Colonel's directly opposite the wall behind the General and the General's opposite their left and right feet respectively.

_"This is stupid Riza, what are you achieving with this? Why are you doing this Riza? Are you that bored that you're wasting time looking for assurance about things you already know?"_

_"No."_

_"Then __**why**__?"_

_"WELL IF I FUCKING WELL KNEW I WOULDN'T BE DOING IT WILL I?"_

She blinked and stared hard at the group of people until she saw spots cloud her vision. She was losing it. She wanted to hit her head hard against the wall and take a cold shower, to go to a shooting range and use up all the bullets in Amestris. However, she had a duty to do as a bodyguard and could only hiss at herself to get it together.

_"Was that a technique to stop yourself from drifting off?_

Within the far corners of her brain she knew it was. Yes. Undeniably yes. But she wasn't going to admit that. Least of all to herself.

She looked up and saw that now Mustang was speaking, or rather ordering, his voice coming out in short, clear barks. The corners of her lips lifted a little, in anticipation for the approaching end of the conversation. Then there was silence, brief and unprecedented, incongruous in Ishval. The two men saluted breaking the silence with the ruffling of coarse wool. The General saluted back and with that the two men took a sharp turn and left the corridor, but not before giving a curt nod to the Lieutenants and to her.

Roy-no, the Brigadier General had turned to the two Lieutenants by the time the Colonel and Scar had left and was speaking to them in hushed yet amiable tones.

_"Roy? Where did that come from? I haven't called him Roy in years. Well a year to be more precise, not since the Promised Day."_

She shook her head as if to physically get rid of her maddening inner musings, and did something else to distract herself that was almost as irritating as her thoughts; she assumed. She assumed, much to her chagrin, that he was probably thanking them for their hard work during this last year in Ishval but how there was still more to be done. He had been churning out this speech to many of the troops this past week so it wasn't as if they hadn't heard it before. She strode toward them, without fear of altering the conversation and realising that despite hearing it many times when it was delivered to other people, it still felt heart-warming when it was said directly to you.

"...That goes to you to Fuery, thank you very much for your hard-work, I couldn't have accomplished much without your expertise."

Riza smiled to herself in a self satisfactory grin. She knew it off by heart and could probably say it in her sleep if needs be. The lazy bastard had not changed a single word since his first rendition, not even for his trusted subordinates.

_"Next he's going to say, _"However, our work is not yet complete. We must-""

Roy continued,"However, our wor-"

Riza's smile was shot down along with Mustang's speech by Havoc's interruption.

"Chief, as lovely as your stick-up your arse speech is, we've all heard it one too many times and the best thanks you could give us is to let us go to bed." Havoc lit up a cigarette and leant against the wall.

"Havoc, I am still your superior officer and you may not talk to me like that. Also you can't smoke in here!" Roy-no, Mustang was working himself into a frenzy over Havoc's nonchalance and Rebecca's inattentiveness and it was quite amusing to watch. Then he spotted her from the corner of his eye and sighed.

"Fine you can go to bed. Dismissed."

Havoc all but skipped down the corridor and down the stairs to his room, with Rebecca following suit, her posture noticeably slumped after the strict stance she had held prior to the General's dismissal. She could even hear Fuery sigh audibly over the two-way mike on the General's lapel.

"You should go to bed too, Major. It's getting late." Mustang turned to her, his posture finally sagging too. Suddenly the weariness from his strenuous work in the past year all but washed him away and she noticed that new lines of stress had become engraved into his forehead, becoming part of him for the rest of his days.

She was too busy studying the new additions on his face that she had almost forgot his question.

"Major?"

"Yes sir! I...I, err mean it's only..." She stumbled across her words and then trailed off as she realised it was near midnight, the clock at the end of the corridor ticking mockingly so. She could feel a warmth blossom over her cheeks and she swore at herself for bumbling over her words and not realising what the time was. These two days she had behaved so unlike herself, stuttering, drifting off and being sick at the sight of some blood. She was no longer the stoic ruthless Major but a blundering, inept idiot who didn't have a grip on herself. She cursed at herself for not realising the time and the unusual Ishvalan weather, the long days and the heat that was so clearly affecting her mind.

_"Don't curse something that has no conscience of its actions and when you know it's your own fucking fault. You've been stationed here before and you know how vital it is to know the time. You're a sniper, goddammit! You need to be alert, how else are you going to keep yourself alive, let alone Ro- the General. The General! The General, the General, the General, the General, the Brigadier General, the Brigadier General Mustang, NOT Roy. How stupid you've become Riza, maybe you should take up Olivier's request to stay a month at Briggs. Or a year. However I don't think Olivier will take on someone as unprincipled as you. Besides then how can you protect Mustang from all the way-."_

"Major, are you okay?"

She gawked at her General, _the_ General, and open and closed her mouth a few times before she sputtered and spoke.

_"After this, I'm going to take the longest coldest shower."_

"Yes, I am fine sir. However I shall not be going to bed as I am on guard duty tonight." She was relieved that her voice had gone back to its original smart tone.

"I was under the suspicion that Sergeant Matthews and Cadet Shua were on vigil tonight?"

_"Yes, but I trust them as much as I trust a mouse not to eat a piece of cheese."_

"Yes, but-"

"No, Major, you will be going to bed now even if I have to order it. Tomorrow we will have a very long day and it's necessary that you are on top form." His voice had hardened around the edges, as he thought of the Council meeting tomorrow. She knew that was what he was thinking about, as he had been stressing over it for the past few weeks.

"Don't make me order it Major." Mustang's face cracked into a smile which seemed foreign and unusual on his face.

"Fine sir, goodnight."

"And the same to you."

He smiled but did nothing more. She had not saluted as they had become frequent and meaningless between them and Roy- goddammit, _Mustang_ had said that he would transfer her himself if she saluted unnecessarily one more time. She smiled as she remembered the incident, as she had told him she would salute him at every waking moment in his life if it would mean she could see him do some paperwork.

He turned and went into his room for the final time. This time tomorrow, they would be back in Central in front of a board of Generals to give them a report how the restorations were going and how they will progress. She fingered his spare key around her neck and let out a long breath. He was right. She would be no good to him if she was not on top form tomorrow and besides falling asleep on the job would mean she'd begin to drift again.

The Sergeant and the Cadet were to arrive at midnight, so she waited until it turned so. Not that it made much difference, but it meant that it would be a few more minutes till she went to bed and was left alone with her thoughts. She counted the seconds down till midnight, but refrained from sighing in relief. She knew these idiot attackers had no sense of time and propriety and would attack when they thought their vigil would most likely be down. However she would not meet their expectations and was determined to be as wary as she ever was.

The Sergeant and the Cadet arrived casually at five past, chatting affably until they saw her and their conversation died a sudden death. She was pleased that despite the events of the past two days, she still retained her steely gaze as evident from the pallid expressions of the two men. They saluted hurriedly and she gave them a quick nod before turning and going into her room, but not before a quick glance at the General's door.

When inside she did not even bother to turn on the lights, instead falling ungracefully onto her bed. Despite her previous desperation to have a shower, she decided to sleep as weariness hit her like a truck at the sight of her bed. She realised that by going to sleep she will be left alone to the mercy of her thoughts and that taking a shower would not have been a bad idea as it would have delayed this. However it was too late. Her mind began to fall into an uncomfortable sleep where she remembered the events of yesterday. About the assailant. About her fainting incident. About the note.

* * *

**A/N: I'm also sorry that nothing much happened in this chapter, just a bunch of musings. Also i gave Sheska a Polish surname because apparently her name's Polish. Also this is set around a year and a bit after the Promised Day.**

**Thank you so much for reading! :)**


End file.
